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What you need to know ahead of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season

nick bromberg
Senior writer
·5-min read

The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season is officially here.

The Daytona 500 begins a stretch of 36 Cup Series races across 38 weeks. Throw in the All-Star Race in May and there’s just one off weekend all season. That comes Easter weekend on April 20. From there, NASCAR’s top series races 28 times in 28 weeks.

Here’s what you need to know ahead of the season along with our championship pick and playoff contenders. If you need to catch up on all the driver movement ahead of the season too, we've got you covered.

Logano became a three-time Cup Series champion in November when he won his fourth race of the season to capture the winner-take-all finale in 2024. Logano has won titles in 2018, 2022 and 2024, so we can preemptively count him out of the title race this year, right?

It would be foolish to actually do that, but it is worth noting that Logano has never qualified for the winner-take-all race outside of an even-year. Since 2014, Logano’s points finishes in even-numbered years are fourth, second, first, third, first and first. In odd-numbered years, Logano has gone sixth, 17th, fifth, eighth and 12th.

Go ahead and pencil Logano in for the 2026 title race.

Logano occupies rare territory. He’s the only active driver with more than two Cup Series titles, while Kyle Busch is the only other active driver with multiple championships.

With Martin Truex Jr.’s retirement from full-time racing, there are just four other active drivers with Cup Series titles; Brad Keselowski (2012), Chase Elliott (2020), Kyle Larson (2021) and Ryan Blaney (2023).

All four have decent shots to get a second Cup Series title. They were in the playoffs a season ago and three of the four finished inside the top seven in the points standings. Blaney finished second to Logano at Phoenix in November while Larson led a series-high 1,700 laps in 2024.

There are three obvious choices among Christopher Bell, William Byron and Tyler Reddick. Byron and Reddick each made the finale a season ago while Bell was in position to make his third straight title race before NASCAR’s ruling amidst the carnival that was the Martinsville fall race.

Denny Hamlin is perpetually included in this category as well. The three-time Daytona 500 champion has passed Mark Martin as the most successful driver to never win a Cup Series title. But he also hasn’t qualified for the title race since the 2021 season. Hamlin, 44, enters the 2025 season with a new crew chief in Chris Gayle and, for the first time since he’s been at Joe Gibbs Racing, some sponsorship vacancies on his car. With longtime sponsor FedEx’s departure from NASCAR, advertising on Hamlin’s car seems to be piecemealed together. Will that have any effect on performance?

Fox and NBC are no longer the only two companies with Cup Series broadcasts. Amazon will televise Cup races for the first time in 2025, while TNT is again in the broadcast fold.

Here’s how it’ll work. Fox has the first 12 points events of the year before Amazon broadcasts five. TNT then has five races before NBC picks up the final 14 races of the year. Outside of the lead-up to the Daytona 500, Prime will have practice and qualifying for the next 16 races before TNT broadcasts it the rest of the season. The CW will have the entire Xfinity Series season and Fox’s networks will again broadcast the Truck Series.

If you’re someone who doesn’t subscribe to many television channels and/or Amazon Prime, you’re not going to be able to see many NASCAR races via your antenna. Just eight of 36 points races are either on Fox or NBC’s main channels and no race in May, June or July is on over-the-air television.

The only new race on the schedule is a trip to the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City. The June race will be the first time the Cup Series has raced at the track, though the Xfinity Series has previously competed at the track that annually hosts an F1 race.

Watkins Glen is back to its previous August date and Homestead has been moved out of the playoffs as well. In their places are races at New Hampshire and Gateway, while Talladega is now a third-round playoff race. Homestead was the perfect playoff track — and should still be the host of the title race — but it’s now hosting the sixth race of the season on March 23.

Logano, Bell, Blaney, Byron, Elliott, Hamlin, Larson and Reddick can easily be penciled into the playoffs. Chase Briscoe should be there too in his first season at Joe Gibbs Racing. Keselowski and teammate Chris Buescher should be strong playoff contenders as well.

That leaves five more spots in the 16-driver field. We think Josh Berry can get in for the Wood Brothers. He’s their best driver since Blaney was with the team. Throw in Ross Chastain, Ty Gibbs and Alex Bowman too. That’s 15.

We’ll give the final spot to Busch, though it’s a bet more on his talent than it is on Richard Childress Racing. The team was awful in 2024 and lost the playoff benefits of Austin Dillon’s win at Richmond because of the way he bowled through drivers for the victory.

We’ll take a final four of Bell, Blaney, Elliott and Larson. Larson is the preseason favorite to win the title and we totally understand why. But we’ll go with Bell to win his first Cup Series title and the first championship for a Toyota driver since 2019.